1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an endoscopic treatment system, or more specifically, to an endoscopic treatment system which treats a living-body tissue using an endoscope and a treatment instrument passed through a therapeutic instruments insertion aid, which is introduced into an intracavitary region.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, endoscopic mucosal resection in which an endoscope inserted into a body cavity through the mouth or anus is used to resect a mucosal lining affected by cancer has been widely adopted for the purpose of curing a carcinoma in the alimentary canal or the like without laparotomy.
In recent years, simultaneous resection of all layers including a mucosal lining and a muscular layer has been attempted in efforts to reliably resect a cancerous tissue and simplify histopathological diagnosis of a resected lesion.
However, there is technological difficulty in resecting all layers of an alimentary organ by utilizing a conventional endoscope. In particular, there is difficulty in suturing an alimentary organ in such a manner that the lumen of the alimentary organ and the abdominal cavity will not communicate with each other before or after resection of an intended region in a living-body tissue.
A suture and resection device used in combination with an endoscope to resect a lesion in an alimentary organ has been disclosed in, for example, PCT Japanese Translation Patent Publication No. 11-506943, U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,913, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-37347.
The PCT Japanese Translation Patent Publication No. 11-506943 proposes a surgical device having a mechanism, which is used to staple a luminal organ or resect a lesion, incorporated in the distal part of the surgical device. The surgical device has a channel through which an endoscope is passed, and a luminal organ is sutured or resected under a field of view offered by the passed-through endoscope.
Moreover, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,913 has proposed an endoscopic stapler freely detachably attached to an endoscope and used to suture or resect a living-body tissue.
The Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-37347 has proposed a treatment system that is a combination of a substantially hard insertion aid means, an endoscope, and a hard treatment instrument, and that is used to suture or resect the large intestine, or more specifically, the descending colon. The suture or resection is achieved while a tissue in the large intestine clamped and lifted using a pair of clamp forceps passed through the endoscope.
However, as proposed in the PCT Japanese Translation Patent Publication No. 11-506943 and the U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,913, a device for suturing or resecting a lesion under a field of view offered by an endoscope is designed to resect or suture a tissue to be resected by leading the tissue into an internal space of the suture and resection device. This poses a problem in that the size of a tissue capable of being resected is limited by the shape of the suture and resection system.
Moreover, as far as the devices and system proposed in the above publications are concerned, an endoscope is disposed more near to an operator than a suture and resection device is. Therefore, when the internal space of the suture and resection device is filled with a tissue led in, the field of view offered by the endoscope is blocked with the tissue. It becomes hard to identify a position to be sutured, a region to be resected, or a lesion.
Furthermore, the suture and resection devices proposed in the PCT Japanese Translation Patent Publication No. 11-506943, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,913, and the Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-37347 respectively are relatively large in size. No consideration is taken into the maneuverability in inserting the suture and resection device into a body cavity together with an endoscope. There is therefore difficulty in inserting the suture and resection device into a deep region in a relatively elongated tortuous luminal organ such as the large intestine.